Foster Functionality will Now be Available

There will be a CALPADS release this Friday, October 31, 2014, beginning at noon to implement the new foster security roles and reports. This is a short release and CALPADS will be back online on Saturday, November 1, 2014.

Background

Foster youth are children for whom the State is responsible because these children have suffered abuse or neglect and are under the jurisdiction of a court. The educational outcomes for foster youth indicate that these students are significantly at-risk, with the highest dropout rate and lowest graduation rate of any other student groups. Foster youth are more likely to miss more school days than their peers due to high school mobility, and they experience a disproportionately higher number of school suspension days.

In order to better meet the educational needs of foster youth, the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) reforms included provisions requiring the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) to share data, on a weekly basis, with the California Department of Education (CDE) for the purpose of identifying for local educational agencies (LEAs) the students enrolled in their schools who are foster youth so that services can be better coordinated and provided to these youth (Education Code Section 49085).

The content of this FLASH was developed in collaboration with state foster youth program staff. Local CALPADS users and LEA program staff will benefit from a joint review of the information provided.

Overview of Foster Functionality in CALPADS

The CDSS and the CDE will provide LEAs, through CALPADS, weekly foster youth reports. These reports are different from many other reports in CALPADS in that they do not require certification and are not used for state or federal reporting. Rather, the sole purpose of the weekly reports is to provide information to LEAs that will assist in the provision of services to foster youth.

The LCFF reforms also require LEAs to develop Local Control and Accountability Plans (LCAPs) that include activities and annual goals for foster youth. The CALPADS reports will help identify the foster youth who should be served. The summary data can inform LCAP goals and activities, helping to determine services and resource allocation at the County Office of Education (COE), district, and school levels. The student detail reports can help staff coordinate services for individual foster students.

Where can I find more information?

Comprehensive information on the CALPADS foster functionality is available on the CDE Web Site, and will not be repeated in this FLASH. For more detailed information, LEAs should refer to the following:

CALPADS Data Guide: Section 3.1.3 – Foster Youth of the CALPADS Data Guide which can be found from the CDE CALPADS System Documentation Web page at http://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/sp/cl/systemdocs.asp, provides comprehensive information regarding how foster youth data are collected, maintained, and shared with LEAs through CALPADS. This section also provides the LCFF definition of foster youth.

Where are the CALPADS Foster Reports and what do they contain?

Beginning November 1, 2014, CALPADS will include Operational Data Store (ODS) summary and student detail reports on foster youth. To access the Foster Reports, the user must have a CALPADS account and the account must have the “Foster” role assigned. (See your LEA CALPADS Administrator to get an account and to obtain this role.) To access the reports:

Log in to CALPADS (see LEA Administrator for instructions)

Navigate to the Reports tab

LEAs may select one of the following reports:

5.6 – Foster Youth Enrolled – Count, with drill down to 5.7

5.7 – Foster Youth Enrolled – Student List

COEs may select one of the following reports:

C/A 5.6 – Foster Youth Enrolled – Count, with drill down to C/A 5.7

C/A 5.7 – Foster Youth Enrolled – Student List

The CDE and the CDSS are working toward refreshing the CALPADS foster reports every Wednesday evening, providing updated data in the foster reports every Thursday morning. Until we have a permanent schedule, the CDE will inform LEAs when the reports have been refreshed through a message on the CALPADS portal.

The 5.6 and C/A 5.6 reports provide summary counts by school within the LEA. The reports display counts by grade level, and identify the number of foster students in “Foster Placement” (students placed outside the home) and in “Foster Family Maintenance” (students living at home receiving family maintenance services). It is important for staff who work directly with foster students to understand whether given students are living outside the home or living at home with their family.

From the summary report, users may drill down to the student detail reports, 5.7 or C/A 5.7. The detail reports provide additional information from the CDSS’ Child Welfare System/Case Management System (CWS/CMS) intended to help school and district staff coordinate services and supports for students. The detail reports include:

Client ID

Social Worker name and phone number

Whether parental rights are limited

If parental rights are limited, the Court Appointed Educational Representative name and phone number

Whether a given student is in an out-of-home placement or living at home receiving family maintenance services

Whether a given student student is in an out-of-home placement, the “Episode Start Date.” or the date the child entered out of home placement

Whether the agency responsible for the foster youth is child welfare or probation

The foster youth’s most current Case ID, which can be used by the social worker to find the student in CWS/CMS

How are the county reports different?

County Offices of Education are responsible for all foster youth attending school within county boundaries, and all foster youth over whom their county has jurisdiction. For these reasons, the COE reports (C/A 5.6 and C/A 5.7), unlike other COE reports in CALPADS, enable COEs to see the student-level data of all students enrolled in LEAs in the county. COEs will also be able to see the data for students over whom the county has jurisdiction but who are enrolled in an LEA in another county. Specifically, COEs will be able to review the data using the following filters:

Enrolled in my county/placed by my county

Enrolled in my county/placed by another county

Enrolled in another county/placed by my county

How are foster youth identified? Can LEAs submit foster students to CALPADS?

The CDSS is the authoritative source for identifying a foster student under the LCFF. Based on the LCFF statutory definition of a foster youth, the CDSS supplies a file of foster records from CWS/CMS to the CDE. For each foster youth, the file includes two CWS/CMS identifiers, the Client ID (10-digit) and the Case ID (19-digit). CALPADS stores all foster client and case IDs regardless of whether the records are matched with CALPADS data.

CALPADS runs a matching process with limited student demographic data and enrollment data in CALPADS, and is currently able to achieve a very high match rate. The CDE will continue to work with the CDSS to improve data quality which will further improve the match rate, and eventually LEAs may rely solely on the state match. In the meantime, however, LEAs may choose to continue to search for matches with their county welfare departments. If LEAs identify students through their local search not identified in the statewide match, beginning in January 2015, LEAs will be able to “look up” foster youth in CALPADS using the Client ID or Case ID. If either ID is found in CALPADS, the LEA will be able to “match” the student who will then show up in subsequent foster reports. Because the CDSS is the authoritative source for who is a foster youth, LEAs cannot simply submit a program record to CALPADS indicating that a given student is a foster youth.

Note: The 19-digit Case ID visible from the CWS/CMS user interface (UI) is the same Case ID stored in CALPADS. There is also a 19-digit Client ID visible from the CWS/CMS UI. This is not the Client ID stored in CALPADS; rather, CALPADS stores a shortened 10-digit version of the 19-digit Client ID which is available in CWS/CMS, but not viewable in the UI. The 10-digit ID is used by CALPADS because a number of COE and county welfare departments share data using the 10-digit Client ID.

Now that we have these data, what should we do?

Manage the foster data locally: It is important to understand that the CALPADS reports will only show current foster students and their data. The reports will not show what has changed from the prior week. Each week, new students may be added, a social worker may change, or students who are no longer a foster youth will drop off. Therefore, LEAs will need to develop their own processes for identifying changes to their foster population each week. To assist LEAs in maintaining these data, in January 2015, CALPADS will include a “Former Foster” report that will display all the students enrolled at a given school who were foster at some point during the school year. This report will be purged and refreshed each school year.

NOTE: Foster students who are in an out-of-home placement are automatically eligible for free meals under the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). Once identified, this eligibility is valid for the school year. LEAs may want to work with their nutrition services departments to identify the students who are automatically eligible for free meals. Eligible students will have a “P” (for Placement) in the “Service Type” column on Report 5.7.

Move toward case management: CALPADS identifies foster students as the first step in building comprehensive and coordinated service and support systems for foster youth. The second step may be to:

Create local reports by adding other data from local student information systems to better meet the needs of the foster youth. LEAs can download the data from CALPADS Report 5.7 in different formats (e.g., csv [comma separated values], Excel, etc.) and create more robust local reports by adding current information on school attendance, class schedules, course grades, and discipline incidents.

Utilize existing case management systems for foster youth that support the delivery of educational services and facilitate sharing of data and information with social welfare and probation agencies.

Collaborate with other agencies: Providing effective services and support for foster students requires a coordinated effort by numerous entities: Education agencies (COEs, districts, and schools), county welfare agencies, county probation agencies, juvenile courts, and other community stakeholders. Coordination among these entities is required in the areas of data/information sharing, and building comprehensive and coordinated service and support systems.

Develop policies and processes: LEAs may consider developing policies/processes in such areas as:

Who has access to foster data, such as CALPADS reports 5.6 and 5.7

How the LEA will balance need for staff to know which students are foster youth so the LEA can provide appropriate services, supports, and instruction with the need to keep this highly sensitive data confidential

How staff will receive foster information

Appropriate uses of foster information

How integrated support services are delivered for foster youth

Appropriate training that staff should receive

To develop policies and processes in these areas, LEAs should work collaboratively with other agencies and stakeholders. In particular, LEAs may want to seek assistance from their COE Foster Youth Services (FYS) coordinators, who have years of experience focused on county level interagency collaboration.

Are there any changes to Report 1.17 – FRPM/EL/Foster – Count ?

The foster students enrolled on Census Day are used in LEAs’ Unduplicated Pupil Count of disadvantaged students required for the LCFF supplemental and concentration grant calculations. LEAs certify the data used as the basis for this count in Report 1.17 – FRPM/English Learner/Foster Youth – Count. Beginning November 3, 2014, Report 1.17 will automatically include foster youth counts from the statewide match. These counts will change with any updates included in the weekly files from the CDSS; however, the counts will freeze when LEAs certify the report.

Report 1.17 has also been modified to display the LCFF foster youth in two columns. The foster students who are in an out-of-home placement are automatically eligible for free meals under the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). These students are displayed in the “Foster Placement” column and are included as part of the Free/Reduced Meal Eligibility counts. The foster students who are in family maintenance are not automatically eligible for free meals and are displayed separately under the “Foster Family Maintenance” column.

Will training on the CALPADS foster functionality be available?

The Fiscal Crisis Management Assistance Team/California School Information Services (FCMAT/CSIS) is completing the production of a self-paced training module specifically for the CALPADS foster functionality. The module will provide training on the CALPADS foster functionality and will include programmatic content geared toward helping LEAs think about how to use the foster data. The CALPADS Administrator will be informed once the Foster Youth Self-Paced training is ready for viewing.

National School Lunch Program Data Exchange (added 09-Feb-2018)
This document serves to provide point-of-sale vendors and student-information-system vendors with a common file layout in an effort to improve data quality.